Imperials have it hard vs eldar but I think you gotta focus on far reaching macros like the overlord and using some widow makers that can counter the siam hann spamm. Also have 2 ships minimum with recon beacon and tag the void stalker. The second that void stalker dies you pretty much won the battle if it isnt too late.

As someone whos never actually played as Eldar, I feel like my understanding of them is a bit lacking despite being fucked by them so many times. Using the Voidstalker for maths purposes, the weapon has 3 attacks, does 30 damage, with a 30 second reload. The bit that I think is confusing me is focus fire, "This weapon deals damage every 1 seconds over 3 seconds to the first ship ahead". The way I'm reading this is:

That seems absurdly high, and I don't recall anything like that much damage ever being done to any of my ships by a VS. Then again, I could well be mistaken. So if someone could either confirm or correct my maths, that would be greatly appreciated. And then if someone could also explain how Nova Cannons are somehow OP with 200 damage AoE but a 1080 damage beam of death is in any way fair, I'd love to know

Scorch715 wrote:As someone whos never actually played as Eldar, I feel like my understanding of them is a bit lacking despite being fucked by them so many times. Using the Voidstalker for maths purposes, the weapon has 3 attacks, does 30 damage, with a 30 second reload. The bit that I think is confusing me is focus fire, "This weapon deals damage every 1 seconds over 3 seconds to the first ship ahead". The way I'm reading this is:

That seems absurdly high, and I don't recall anything like that much damage ever being done to any of my ships by a VS. Then again, I could well be mistaken. So if someone could either confirm or correct my maths, that would be greatly appreciated. And then if someone could also explain how Nova Cannons are somehow OP with 200 damage AoE but a 1080 damage beam of death is in any way fair, I'd love to know

as far as I understand is 30 damage TROUGH those 3 seconds. SO you have an extra x3 on your calculation. That would mean 360 damage .

They have been nerfed, I think - damage got cut in half in exchange for reduction of the cooldown by a third (so 'alpha damage' is cut in half, overall DPM is reduced, and the micro burden is higher).

artisticMink wrote:It's a bold request and it most likely won't happen.

Thing is, if i'm entirely honest - i would actually support it. I feel like they need a rework from the ground up. I don't think it's possible to make eldar fun to play as-and-against with cooldown tweaking.

The basic problem i see with them, ist the factions ability to have complete control over the engagement. Eldar ships can outrun every other ship in the game, which enables the player to approach and disengage at will without much risk. The only thing that could go wrong would be a bad lightning strike / homing boarding torpedo roll.

While engagements with other factions can take up to a few minutes, games against or as eldar are in my experience very short, as you need two to three pulsar pulses per enemy ship (Depending on focused crystal proc and all three pulses hitting). That's enough time for maybe one set of cooldowns to refresh. A lot of people arguing with slanesh favors, homing boarding torpedoes or just straightout 'go boarding' don't take into account that the damage output of pulsars is - even after the patch - so high that engagements don't last more then two minutes. Usually.

I read quite often that Eldars are very micro-heavy and therefore deserve a high payout. In all honesty and without wanting to offend anyone: I don't see it. Even when playing my light cruiser uthwe setup and i have about seven ships under control, it's not more micro intensive then managing my imperial fleet. Staying out of range, vaulting and using darkstar squadron is not rocket science.

Without knowing hot the situation is here, on the steam forums there's quite a bit of frustration. Yes sure, it's the steam forums and the salt is thick and old. But disconnecting in matchups against eldars is a thing. I've to admit that i did it myself after loosing one to many times and just not wanting to deal with it. The 2v2 best choice for boosting a friend is to take your eldar commander on a walk.

In contrast to that, i don't see that many Eldar in MP. I see a lot of chaos, some imps and few orkz. Eldars are rather rare. Probably sounds like it contradicts my eldar whine but the thing is: A lot of people don't enjoy playing eldar. Either because they don't feel it being a challenge or they don't want to get disconnected by other players all the time. At least that's what i'm taking from it.

What i want to say is: Currently, Playing AS eldar isn't fun. Playing AGAINST eldar isn't fun. I know Tindalos can't rework the whole faction because of time constraints and the fact that it's a part of the single player experience. But i would very much appriciate if they could give the faction another in-depth look. For the sake of eldar and non-eldar players alike.

One of the effects and, I suspect, part of the motivation for Eldar players having developed keepaway strategies like pulsar sniping and the one you describe is that it keeps the micro to a manageable level. Dart in, fire, dart out – with a swarm of Darkstars, it also makes dodging torpedoes, bombers, and assault craft less important. It’s easier to keep holofields at full because you’re moving in relatively straight lines most of the time, and there’s not much risk of collisions.

The in-close combat that Scorch was talking about, including boosting focused ships out of kill zones? MUCH more micro-intensive. I’d probably say that IN are the next most micro-intensive in the game, but there’s simply no comparison between IN and eldar fighting in close when it comes to micro burden. The point I was making is that the AI could pull that off, only the best human players will be able to do so. "Staying out of range, vaulting and using darkstar squadron" is much easier to manage, and that's why players use such tactics. If they lose the ability to disengage like you seem to be suggesting, though, they'll be forced to engage in knife-fights, and those are a micromanagement nightmare.

Unless everyone is set to the same speed, there’s always going to be some faction that is faster than the others and has a better ability to pick and choose their engagements. Eldar characteristics actually compensate for this somewhat because their lack of shields means that even a brief engagement is likely to cause hull damage. Additionally, if they didn’t have that speed, then Eldar would be stuck in close combat in every battle, at which point their heavy micro burden would be crippling for most players, particularly if you don’t want to be running TC permanently (which is unfun for other factions which generally only need the TC briefly for lining up torpedoes and the like).

Personally, I lay the blame at the way pulsars were implemented. Tabletop pulsars, while there was the potential to get three hits in, statistically were only 75% more effective than a regular lance of equal strength… and this was compensated for by Eldar having less pulsars than other races had lances on their lance ships of comparable size. The pulsars we have are something that is basically guaranteed to get three hits in if you have the micro to line them up right. Personally, I think the best answer is to normalise pulsars: make them fire in an arc like everyone else’s lances rather than being an activated ability, and set the damage of a pulsar volley to whatever is balanced after that. This would both bring down the micro burden – especially in close combat – and reduce the ability of pulsar volleys to just wipe ships out.

Do that, and I think Tindalos can then start balancing the rest. The current implementation of pulsars, however, are I think a large part of what makes Eldar unbalanceable (and I'm a person who's very cautious about describing something as 'unbalanceable'), especially if you're considering balance across different skill levels.

Draxynnic wrote:Personally, I lay the blame at the way pulsars were implemented. Tabletop pulsars, while there was the potential to get three hits in, statistically were only 75% more effective than a regular lance of equal strength… and this was compensated for by Eldar having less pulsars than other races had lances on their lance ships of comparable size. The pulsars we have are something that is basically guaranteed to get three hits in if you have the micro to line them up right. Personally, I think the best answer is to normalise pulsars: make them fire in an arc like everyone else’s lances rather than being an activated ability, and set the damage of a pulsar volley to whatever is balanced after that. This would both bring down the micro burden – especially in close combat – and reduce the ability of pulsar volleys to just wipe ships out.

Do that, and I think Tindalos can then start balancing the rest. The current implementation of pulsars, however, are I think a large part of what makes Eldar unbalanceable (and I'm a person who's very cautious about describing something as 'unbalanceable'), especially if you're considering balance across different skill levels.

I'm very much in agreement with you about the pulsars. I'd happily play against something with a really powerful prow lance as opposed to the mini armageddon gun that the pulsar currently is

Draxynnic wrote:Personally, I lay the blame at the way pulsars were implemented. Tabletop pulsars, while there was the potential to get three hits in, statistically were only 75% more effective than a regular lance of equal strength… and this was compensated for by Eldar having less pulsars than other races had lances on their lance ships of comparable size. The pulsars we have are something that is basically guaranteed to get three hits in if you have the micro to line them up right. Personally, I think the best answer is to normalise pulsars: make them fire in an arc like everyone else’s lances rather than being an activated ability, and set the damage of a pulsar volley to whatever is balanced after that. This would both bring down the micro burden – especially in close combat – and reduce the ability of pulsar volleys to just wipe ships out.

Do that, and I think Tindalos can then start balancing the rest. The current implementation of pulsars, however, are I think a large part of what makes Eldar unbalanceable (and I'm a person who's very cautious about describing something as 'unbalanceable'), especially if you're considering balance across different skill levels.

I'm very much in agreement with you about the pulsars. I'd happily play against something with a really powerful prow lance as opposed to the mini armageddon gun that the pulsar currently is

Issue is, then eldars would get VERY VERY VERY easy to defeat.. too easy. Pulsars are the ONly thing that really compensate their lack of armor, HP, lack of shields protecting from lighting strike. Its complicated....

That's part of the problem. Pulsars as currently implemented are the crutch that keeps Eldar viable, but the rest can't be made stronger without taking away that crutch.

With pulsars being as they are, while also being a significant part of the armament of everything bigger than a Shadow, everything else is held back by the need to keep the package as a whole balanced when used by a player who's good with pulsars. When there's one thing that makes a faction OP, and without it they'd clearly be UP, that generally means that everything else has to be kept weak in order to prevent the crutch from getting out of control.

Normalise pulsars, and it'll be possible to balance the rest of the Eldar stuff so that it's fun both to play and to play against. As things currently stand... I don't think there's a middle ground where pulsars can be balanced when used by top-end players with super-high APM that leaves Eldar viable for anyone but those top-end players.

What do we think a normalised pulsar should be like then? I picture something along the lines of the Imperial heavy prow lance but more powerful. So perhaps a lance with 30 damage and a 12-15 second recharge? That would give the Voidstalker a 120 damage burst with its 4 pulsars, plus its starcannons, which sounds decent to me